Squadron PvP

In the Battlefield menu you will find everything related to Squadrons PvP. It consists of a battlefield map divided into zones, each with its own x,y coordinates to make it easy to identify.

The daily map

The map is not permanent. A new one is generated every day, at 20:10 UTC on Steam and 21:10 UTC on web, and the previous one is retired with it. Every zone rerolls its tier and its bonus, so the map you learned yesterday is not the map you wake up to.

Squadron groups are seeded onto the fresh map at random when it is generated, which is why a squadron can find itself holding a zone it never attacked. Everything from there on is won and lost the usual way.

The map currently has 50 zones. That size is set per realm and can be changed, it does not grow on its own as squadrons join.

Zone tiers

Zones are not equal. Each one belongs to a tier that sets the trade-off between its bonus and its badge output: the higher the bonus percentage, the fewer badges per hour it generates.

Elite zones are the rarest on the map and low tier zones the most common, but how many there are of each can change from one map to the next.

Zone rewards

Zones have two kinds of rewards.

Bonuses. There are 6 different types, and each zone carries one of them:

• Battling: multiplicative bonus to battling experience and credit gains
• Gathering: multiplicative bonus to gathering experience and resource gains
• Exploring: multiplicative bonus to exploring experience and cosmic dust gains
• Crafting: multiplicative crafting XP bonus
• Base: reduced upkeep cost
• Dungeon: bonus applied to dungeon runs

Zones of the same type add up. Two battling zones at 15% each mean 30% on your battling, so holding several zones of one type is what turns the Battlefield into real progression.

Badges. Badges are calculated hourly, but the reward is paid out every 12 minutes, and every payout lands in two different places:

• The squadron pool, multiplied by the level of the Headquarters building plus one. It pays the squadron banner and the PvP squadron perks.
• Your own badges, where every member of the squadron receives the same base amount the zones generated, on top of the squadron pool and without taking anything from it. This is what you spend at the vendor.

Your personal payout can be raised with the Base building module Battling Trainer (PvP), and the squadron payout with the Headquarters building. Each one boosts only its own pool.

Cooldowns and protection

• Winning a battle and occupying a zone gives you 1 hour of protection, during which you cannot be attacked.
• There is also a 1 hour cooldown during which you cannot leave the zone.
• If you attack a squadron occupying a zone and lose, you get a 1 hour cooldown before you can attack that zone again.
• Leaving a zone free also gives you a 1 hour cooldown.

Those two hours are the base values, and the PvP squadron perks move them: every level of the protection perk adds 5 minutes to the protection you get on a zone you just took, and every level of the cooldown perk cuts 2 minutes off the wait before you can attack again.

Remember

An attack is not instant. Ten minutes pass between launching it and the battle resolving, and the defender can see it coming. That window is the last chance either side has to reorder the group that is about to fight.

PvP Groups

Squadrons can form up to three groups with their members. In the PvP Groups tab you can place your members in groups and sort them to attack or defend each zone. You can only move members between groups when the group is not occupying or attacking a zone.

PvP Setup

Here you can set up your PvP stats and gear. PvP has a separate set of stats from PvE, so you can build different setups for each.

PvP Gear has four pieces, and each one carries a stat of your choice plus one active skill picked from Stun, Focus, Damage over time and Block. With four pieces, that means up to four active skills in a battle.

Each piece also has its own upgrade material, produced at the Laboratory:

Two things outside the Battlefield feed those numbers. Your crafting level raises what every gear piece contributes, alongside the level and tier of the piece itself, so a crafter walks into a battle with better gear than a player holding the same pieces. And an active Velari pet adds 50 points per pet level to your power, hull, precision and evasion, PvP only.

Vendor

There is a PvP Vendor where you can exchange your own badges for enhanced blueprints, warp capsules and NPC materials. The squadron pool is spent separately, on the PvP squadron perks and on new banners to show in the battlefield, so a squadron never has to choose between upgrading itself and letting its members buy.

Battle logs

You can check your battle logs against other squadrons to evaluate the results and adjust your groups and setup.

Battles

In Squadron battles, each group participates with the members that are active, meaning they are within their offline-actions window: logged in within the last 24 hours, or 72 with an active premium subscription. Each member uses their clones with their skills against the enemy clones. The squadron that finishes the fight alive wins the battle and occupies the zone.

How a fight plays out

One member from each side fights at a time, with all of their clones at once. Defenders strike first every round. When a member loses every clone, the next member of the group steps in, following the order you set in the PvP Groups tab. The battle ends when one side runs out of members.

Every attack rolls a hit chance of precision / (precision + evasion), so neither stat ever stops being useful and neither one caps out.

A landed hit is still your clone's hit: its critical chance, its critical damage and its dual shot all roll here exactly as they do against NPCs, so the clones you built for PvE are the ones swinging in PvP.

The kill debuff

Every time you finish off an enemy member, your clones take a 20% debuff, multiplied by 1.25 for each kill after that, up to a maximum of 90%. It lowers your damage, your precision and your evasion, and it is what keeps the losing side in the fight. The clones of the member that steps in next start with no debuff.

Damage, precision and evasion never fall below 100 no matter how deep the debuff goes, so a squadron on a long win streak gets weak, never harmless.

Skills

Each gear piece assigned to a skill adds a 5% chance for that skill to trigger, except Focus, which adds 2.5%. You can put all four pieces on the same skill to stack the chance.

• Stun: the enemy clone loses its next round. A clone that is already stunned cannot be stunned again.
• Block: the defending clone's chance to cancel the whole attack, including the stun that came with it.
• Focus: marks an enemy clone, and every one of your clones targets it until it dies.
• Damage over time: puts 3 charges on the enemy clone. Each charge deals 50% of the attacker's base damage and ignores the kill debuff, and one charge is spent per landed hit from any of your clones, so a full squad can burn all three in a single round.

Draws

If a fight reaches 300 rounds with both sides still standing, the squadron with more member kills wins. If both killed the same number, the side with more remaining HP wins. If that is tied too, the defending squadron keeps the zone.

The defender also keeps it when both sides fall in the same round. Every tie in this game goes to whoever is already holding the zone.

TL;DR:

• The map is rebuilt every day, so no zone is ever held for good.
• Pick your zone by what you need: high tiers give a bigger bonus, low tiers give more badges, and zones of the same type add up.
• Badges are paid twice: once to the squadron and once to every member, and each pool has its own uses.
• Keep your PvP gear and stats separate from your PvE build.
• Members outside their offline-actions window do not take part in the fight.
• Skills stack: four pieces on the same skill means four times the chance.
• Every kill debuffs the winning side, so a battle is rarely decided by the first duel.